But when he stepped through the door—the only door to the house, which opened right into the small living room and the kitchen area to the right—he saw things the way she would see them, and he thought: She will die, this place will depress her so much. He really didn’t know what to do. He drove to the Walmart outside of town and bought a rug, and that made a huge difference. Still, the couch was lumpy and its original yellow flowered upholstery was worn; at points it was threadbare. The kitchen table had a linoleum top, and it was impossible to make it look newer. There was no tablecloth in the house, and he had doubts about buying one. He gave up. But the day before she was to arrive he went into town and got a haircut; usually he cut his own hair. Only when he was driving home did he wonder: Was he supposed to have tipped the man who cut his hair?
That night he woke at three with nightmares he could not remember. He woke again at four, and could not get back to sleep. She had said she’d be there by two in the afternoon. At one o’clock he opened the blinds up, but even though the sky was cloudy the windows still looked streaky, and so he closed the blinds again. Then he sat on the couch and waited.
At twenty minutes past two, Pete heard a car in the pebbly driveway. He peeked through the blind and saw a woman step from a white car. When he heard the knock on the door, he was so anxious he felt his eyesight had been affected. He had expected—he realized this later—that sunlight would flood the house, meaning that the presence of Lucy would shine and shine. But she was shorter than he remembered, and much thinner. And she wore a black jacket that seemed like something a man would wear, and black jeans, and black boots, and her face looked so tired. And old! But her eyes sparkled. “Petie,” she said, and he said, “Lucy.”
She held her arms out, and he gave her a tentative hug; they had never hugged in their family and the gesture was not easy for him. The top of her head reached his chin. He stepped back and said, “I got a haircut,” moving his hand over his head.
“You look wonderful,” Lucy said.
And then, almost, he wished she hadn’t come; it would be too tiring.
“I couldn’t find the road,” Lucy said, and her face showed real surprise. “I mean, I must have driven by it five times, I kept thinking, Where is it? And then finally—God, I’m so stupid—finally I realized the sign’s been taken down, you know, the sign that said ‘Sewing and Alterations.’？”
“Oh yeah. I took that sign down over a year ago.” Pete added, “I figured it was time.”
“Oh, of course it was, Petie. It’s just my stupid old mind kept waiting to see it—and I— Hello, Pete. Oh my God, hello.” She looked straight into his eyes, and he saw that it was her; he saw his sister.
“I cleaned up for you,” he said.
“Well, thank you.”
Oh, he was nervous.
“Petie, listen to this.” She moved to the couch and sat down with a familiarity that surprised him, as though she had been sitting on that couch for years. He sat slowly in the old armchair in the corner, and watched while she slipped off her black boots, which were more like shoes, he saw now. “Listen to this,” Lucy said. “I saw Abel Blaine. He came to my reading.”
“You saw Abel?” Abel Blaine was their second cousin on their mother’s side; he had come to stay with them a few summers when they were children, along with his younger sister, Dottie. Abel and Dottie had been as poor as they were. “What was he like?” Pete had not thought of Abel for years. “Wow, Lucy, you saw Abel. Where does he live?”
“I’ll tell you, hold on.” Lucy scooted her feet up under her, leaning down to push aside her black shoe-boots. Pete had never seen anything like them. Little zippers went up their backs. “Okay.” Lucy brushed at the front of her black jacket and said, “So, I’m sitting there signing books, and this man—this tall man with nice-looking gray hair—he was standing very patiently, I noticed that, all alone, and when he finally got to me he said, ‘Hi, Lucy,’ and his voice sounded familiar, can you believe that, Pete? After all these years, he sounded like Abel. And I said, ‘Wait,’ and he said, ‘It’s me, Abel,’ and I just jumped up, Petie, and we hugged, oh God did we hug. Abel Blaine!”
Pete felt excited; her excitement made its way right to him.
Lucy said, “He lives right outside of Chicago, in kind of a ritzy neighborhood. He’s been running an air-conditioning outfit for years. I said, ‘Is your wife here?,’ and he said, No, she was sorry she couldn’t make it, but she had some auxiliary meeting or something.”